


it's not a side effect of the cocaine: i am thinking it must be love.

by sidnihoudini



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-09
Updated: 2007-09-09
Packaged: 2017-10-08 00:36:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/70907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidnihoudini/pseuds/sidnihoudini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for spn_ficathon.  My prompt was: Sam is the new kid at school again, already seen as a geek by most of the schools population. If they only knew he was dating/fucking the hot new mechanic that everybody can't stop talking about and lusting after. Maybe it's time they found out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's not a side effect of the cocaine: i am thinking it must be love.

_we'll make them so jealous, we'll make them hate us._

 

.

 

The fourth day into his first year, Sam realizes that anyone who ever told him college was entirely different to high school were filthy liars. And probably had poor fashion taste.

Sam, standing at a bus stop somewhere in rural Vermont, wiggles the loose knot in the scarf around his neck, and scrolls through the carefully assigned genres in his iPod. He thinks that, also, anyone who ever told him that packing up and moving three states over would be _refreshing_ were bitches, too. In fact, it's entirely the opposite. He's stressed, broke, cold, and what makes it even worse is that his iPod battery is approaching dead.

His cell starts buzzing away in his pocket just as the college-route bus pulls up to the sidewalk, wheels reeling over the black ice frozen into the ground. Freak weather for September, his professors keep telling him, laughing like it's this big in-joke. Scowling at the thought, Sam pulls his cell out and glances at the caller ID as he's trying to dig a fare's worth of quarters out of his pocket.

_CALLING: d.  
829-2938_

Well. Sam feels the corner of his mouth twitching up into a smile. So maybe Vermont's not that bad.

 

.

 

He'd met Dean the third day he'd move to Burlington, after he'd managed to drop his $240 camera memory card into the air vent of his Budget rent-a-car.

"So you brought'er into a mechanic," Dean had smirked at him, wiping his oily hands into an equally oily cloth. Sam, in a rare moment of feeling entirely _uncool_, made an 'uhh?' noise, and scratched at the back of his neck.

Trying to smile up from underneath his bangs, Sam tilted his head a little and raised his eyebrows. "Seems like it."

"Right." Dean nodded and let out a short little breath that got Sam half-hard. Dean had nice arms, okay, the mechanic thing worked for him.

Five minutes later, Dean popped off the little plastic guard thing covering the vent with a screwdriver, reached about an inch and a half down, and handed the thin memory card over.

"Um," Sam took the card, and let his fingertips bump into Dean's. "Thanks."

Dean was still half-grinning, this crooked expression that made his bottom lip look all wet. Sam didn't know how that worked.

"I'm gonna have to charge you the forty-five," Dean told him, crawling back out of the front seat. "Service fee."

Nodding, Sam licked his lips and nodded, flipping the little memory card over between his thumb and forefinger, then looked back down at Dean, wiggling the rent-a-car's doorknob and eyeing the little latch thing that popped out at the side. Sam wasn't real good with mechanics.

"Yeah, yeah, for sure," Sam nodded, trying to go for agreeable. Dean was still just smirking at him, waiting.

"So." Dean eyed the car, wiped the car oil left over from earlier this morning off of his cheek. Sam wasn't entirely sure what car oil tasted like, but he was fully confident that he wanted to lick it off Dean. "Tourist, or?..."

"Nah, I'm here for school." Sam started fishing his wallet out, hoping he had a fifty left over from his bank run a week ago.

Dean seemed relatively interested. "Oh yeah?"

"Pre-law, it's kinda tedious." Sam flipped through the bill fold, thumbing over crumpled receipts from Denny's and old movie stubs. "I've been here like, three days, and no offence or anything, but Burlington's _boring_."

Dean grins, shakes his head. "None taken. I've been here two months."

"Oh yeah?" Sam's eyebrows go up as he tugs out a fifty, folding the very corner of the bill over a bit. "Where you from?"

"Cali," Dean answers, standing up, taking a step away from the car. Towards Sam. "Not L.A. Not Orange County."

Sam grins wide, holding the bill between his forefinger and middle finger.

"Me, Chicago. I've been to Los Angeles once, I threw up all over Mickey Mouse."

Laughing, Dean leans in a bit further, bringing his hand up to wrap around the money between them. Sam still hasn't let go, and a smirk twitches up the corner of his mouth as Dean slides his fingers over Ben Franklin's face, wrinkling the paper, tugging gently.

"Tell you what." Dean's fingers are dangerously close to Sam's, and Sam can feel the heat coming off of Dean's hips. The angle he's standing at make his hip bones stick out sharp past the low denim he's wearing, relaxed and sway-backed. "If you drive real quick, my boss won't catch you before he gets back from his lunch break."

Sam laughs, ducking his head down, and coming close enough to Dean's face that they can feel each other breathing.

"How about," Sam pauses and lets go of the bill. Dean smirks and raises his eyebrow, holding the money at one end, so it's sticking up straight into the air. "You take _your_ lunch break now?"

Laughing for real now, Dean tucks the money into the back pocket of his Levis, and wraps an arm around Sam's shoulders to pull him down, until they're mouth to mouth and Sam can feel the heat coming out of Dean's arm, pressed against the back of his neck.

"Give me five," Dean promises into Sam's mouth, as Sam brings his hand up and grabs at Dean's face to keep him from moving.

Nodding but not letting go, Sam lip-bites the corner of Dean's mouth, and smiles into the way Dean starts crooked-grinning.

 

.

 

"Bus was late," Sam tells him, navigating between a woman in a double-wide wheel chair and some young lady with a stroller. He offers them both half-smiles, and swings his bag around so it doesn't hit anyone in the face. "I'll be there in like, ten. It's fucking freezing out, by the way."

The girl across the aisle watches him, as he slides into one of the ripped plastic covered seats with his bag in one arm and his cell in the other. She notices the way he's smiling, the twitch to his mouth as he says something else into the phone, quiet and private, even though there's still something hesitant behind it.

When he says his goodbyes and snaps the phone shut he waits for a half-second, looking at the caller display before tossing it back into his bag.

He gets off two stops before her, and she watches the jacket pulled across the back of his shoulders as the bus pulls away from the curb. With his hands in his pockets he turns down a little side-road, but she still watches him until he's too far away to make out.

 

.

 

All of Sam's friends had told him it was dumb to go to school out of state. They were all going to U of C, Illinois University or Chicago State – fuck, they had made plans to meet up for weekly poker games, and the whole time Sam had been all high and mighty that he was moving away from home, thinking, well. At least I won't have to rely on anyone to heat up my leftovers.

After one day running around campus, trying to find buildings and dropping literally hundreds of dollars on text books, all Sam had wanted to do was crawl back home on his hands and knees, begging for forgiveness. _I'll never leave you guys again,_ that kind of thing. Then again, he had always kinda been dramatic.

His American Studies professor was a total dick, and liked to call Sam _Samuel_ just because he'd seen the 'Preferred Name – Sam' field on his school file. The bitch who sat behind him in Criminal Justice had totally blown him off when he'd introduced himself, and some dude in Sociology had called him 'Sammy' the entire hour and a half they'd had to sit through an introduction presentation.

On his way back to the bus stop, Sam had concluded that school fucking sucked balls. And he still hadn't heard back from any jobs he'd applied for, despite the fact they were for shitty positions, baristas and fast food cooks and pizza delivery boys. He just needed some cash, and fast. He'd managed to pay in advance for his first three months of rent, and despite the fact off-campus housing added $400 to his monthly expenses, not being _on_ campus was starting to look good, and fast.

Scowling at the bus stop time-table, Sam had shifted his gigantic stack of pre-law text from one arm to the other, and searched the schedule for the next #11 that would swing by.

And the last jewel in the fucking crown was when he fell getting into the bus, and his books flew everywhere. Even the driver had laughed at him.

 

.

 

Standing on the stoop of Dean's little rented one-bedroom, Sam twitches enough for his nervousness to be obvious: messing with his hair, adjusting the cuffs of his hoodie, making sure his fly's all the way up.

Dean answers the door in black jeans and a dark gray t-shirt. Sam's mouth immediately tastes like sand.

"I woulda picked you up," Dean shrugs through the mosquito netting of the screen door, using one arm to push it open for Sam.

Sam shakes his head and grabs for the doorknob to make sure it doesn't swing shut and knock him in the ass, and says, "Don't worry about it. I just came from school."

"School, right. Let me guess," Dean grins at him, wiggling his eyebrows as Sam steps into the foyer and looks around. Burnt orange carpet, weird bumpy white walls, exposed wooden beams. Yeah, about right. Sam glances back at Dean. "Med school."

Laughing and shaking his head, Sam drops his bag next to the front door and follows Dean through the makeshift living room. "Pre-law."

"Oh yeah," Dean looks over his shoulder as he goes into the kitchen to retrieve two beers. "You mentioned that. Sorry."

Still half-smiling, Sam shakes his head and stops at the bottom of the three steps that lead up into the kitchen. Sam isn't sure if the living room is sunken, or the kitchen is just raised.

"Don't worry about it," Sam tells him, messing with his hair again. "It's boring anyway."

Dean re-appears in the kitchen door with an appreciative grin on his face, hips swung out with a beer in each hand, his fingers wrapped tightly around their necks. Sam swallows.

"I got this new pay-per-view thing," Dean explains, bouncing down the few steps, handing a beer off to Sam, and starting over to where there are two overstuffed, obviously second-hand arm chairs set up in front of a TV that's easily worth a good five grand. Sam looks at it and laughs, shaking his head. "Like, movies and junk on demand."

He swings around the front of one of the arm chairs, and falls backwards into it, easily kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. Sam, still smiling, cracks open his beer, and follows.

"No kidding," He indulges, settling down into the chair next to Dean's.

 

.

 

The worst kick in the ass, beyond the shitty scheduling and lack of funds, is the fact that in high school, Sam was _cool_. He was _popular_. People _liked_ him, even the bitchy ones who gave everyone else sass. He was fucking celebrated, everyone was always, 'oh hey, Sam!', and they'd let him share lockers or even steal half of their lunch when he forgot his.

He should've just stayed in fucking Chicago, and in the middle of his second sleepless night in Vermont, he wonders how much money he'd lose if he just quit pre-law and moved back to study in Illinois. Then he'd thrown back two Tylenol 3's he had left over from that time he broke his ankle, and passed out until morning.

And it wasn't until he was walking to class and some chick accused him of being a creep just for smiling at her that he remembered the night before, when he had been _this close_ to phoning a taxi to take him to the airport. Fuck, he'd even go on standby for a plane ticket, as long as he didn't have to deal with this creepy alter-world that he'd found himself in.

 

.

 

"Fuck, Sam," Is something Sam hasn't been hearing a lot of – not in a weird, sarcastic tone from one of his guy friends after he kicks the soccer ball clear across the field; not from one of his girl friends after he makes them a thoughtful card for their birthday and they say it all choked up and awesome like he likes; and most definitely not all tight-voiced, rough like Dean's saying it now, grinding down into his lap with his thumbs gripping behind Sam's ears, pressing against the curved bone back there.

Sam, spread out in one of the thrift chairs, almost knocks over his third (fourth?) beer when Dean starts unzipping his hoodie and reaching for the cheap department store brand undershirt underneath, getting his hands all up underneath it, the edges of his fingers grazing over Sam's nipples.

After accidentally ordering _Freedom Writers_ for $4.99, and a quick argument that had Dean wanting to order _House of 1000 Corpses _instead of listening to Sam's plan of watching the movie he'd just been billed five bucks for, Dean had started laughing and then grabbed Sam's head and kissed him in a... really, just unbelievable way.

"Yeah," Sam whispers without really thinking about it, one hand down the back of Dean's pants, the tips of his fingers starting to heat up from where they're flush against Dean's warm skin. It feels like he's been hard for days, but the movie hasn't even reached the climax.

Not like Sam's been listening to Hilary Swank give motivational speeches for an hour and a half now, or anything.

"How many fucking layers do you need?" Dean's grumbling to himself in-between sucking off Sam's mouth, his hands still twisting away at the fabric creased over Sam's stomach. Grinning, Sam pulls back for a half-second, and using a combined effort to pull all three (okay, four) layers off at once, he drops the t-shirts and undershirt and hoodie off the side of the armchair, then reaches up to wrap one arm around Dean's shoulders and pull him down until they're chest to chest, and almost bash their noses together.

 

.

 

Sam feels hung-over from lack of sleep the next morning, as he sits half-awake in his chair. It doesn't help that the lecture he's supposed to be taking notes on is something about law, war and disorder, and this should be cool because his professor's talking about _criminals_ and life sentences, but he can't stop yawning long enough to really interest himself in it.

The chick sitting in the row below him turns around and offers a very pointed glare two or three times, despite the fact he's been yawning with his mouth closed and a hand over that. He's got watery eyes from forcing them down, and she has the balls to _glare_ at him. He offers back an impassive expression that's as close as he's getting to full-out angry right now, and points back to the front of the room.

She mouths, 'asshole,' at him, but turns around anyways. She's even doing that annoying tap-tap-tap thing with her pen against the edge of her binder.

Sam wants to kick her in the back of the head.

He decides he's far enough in back to not have to pretend like he's listening anymore. He can get the notes online later anyways, it'll cost him another $50 subscription fee, but collegenotes.com saved him in high school when he had to write some major Hamlet paper, and he's pretty sure he can wrangle another couple good grades out of that site again.

So he leans back in his chair and pulls out his blackberry, full QWERTY keyboard because last summer he got sick of texting stuff like _uhat tjme eo youuu wbbana meet?!@_ to his friends. He checks his email, nothing except some random forward from one of his back-home girl friends' friends, so he navigates over to his texts and creates a new message.

_To: d._

how come 1 of the few times i'm not hungover, i somehow trade-off for being tired enough to pass out in the fucking SUB building? -sam

Sent: 00:2:31

Satisfied with the way the message turns out, he sets his phone on the corner of the little desk he always has to literally cram his legs under, and picks up his pen, deciding to fill the gaps in-between conversation with minor note-taking. The professor's in the middle of what seems to be a personal ramble about ethics and the judicial system. Whatever, all Sam wanted to hear about were gang shootings and people getting what's coming to them.

He's going to be an awesome lawyer.

Forgetting his cell's set on vibrate _and_ ring, not only does a shrill, annoying _de-de-de-de-deeeeep!_ ring through the entire classroom, the phone actually vibrates its way off of the desk in one pulse, and bounces down the two little steps leading his row to the next.

Mortified (and also, kind of amused) Sam makes quick apologies and slides half-way out of the desk to reach out for the phone that some dude sitting beside the girl who's been giving him the stink-eye the whole time hands to him. He nods his thanks to the guy in total dude-speak, and slides back into his desk. Meanwhile, his teacher's so involved with waving one arm around he's actually going red-faced and shrill at the thought of someone getting the death sentence for murdering an entire county.

Sam glances down at the screen of his phone: _1 New Message._

Grinning, he hits 'read.'

_To: Sam  
From: d._

Maybe your tired because of all those BJs. you Know, just athought. i work until 6 – meet up later?

Sent: 00:3:03  
Received: 00:3:29

Trying to wrangle back the massive smile planning to domineer his face, Sam manages a reply that sounds a lot like YEAH OKAY FOR SURE ABSOLUTELY DEAN WHATEVER YOU WANT!!! but transcends more like, _'sounds good. call me after work and we'll figure something out. –sam.'_

 

.

 

Since he moved to Vermont, which is only touching on about a month now, the only person from back home Sam's really had an contact with is his childhood best friend, Michael, who continues to be just as simple as his name. Mikey gives him the update, and as Sam suspected, nothing has really changed in Chicago, not when everyone is still pulling the same dumb old tricks Sam remembers from grade school. Or maybe he's just being cynical, because really, what's a month? Thirty days, sometimes thirty one.

Not thinking to mention Dean, Sam makes noise when Mikey asks him what's been up, school-this and school-that, asks about the ex-boyfriend he left behind and how it's going for Mikey to be attending art school with him.

With a sinking belly after, Sam realizes that their conversation is forgettable at best.

.

 

Sam wrangles three bags of groceries through the front door of his apartment just as the answering machine picks up.

"Fuck," He whispers, kicking the door closed, trying to run to the little kitchenette, because he knows that if he just drops the bags, he'll be finding apples stuck under the hall table for weeks.

The extended beep crawls over the cheap plastic wood floor just as Sam makes it to the kitchen counter and dumps the next couple day's meals down on them.

"You're not there. I'll try your cell." Click.

Sam smiles and shakes his head, flips the light in the kitchen on just as his cell starts vibrating in his jacket pocket.

"Stalker," Sam greets, shrugging off his jacket as he opens the fridge to put the (chocolate) milk away. If he doesn't do it now he'll forget, and find the carton on his counter a few days later.

Dean laughs, and Sam immediately recognizes the background noise as the garage. "You wish. Just a break before I go bust my ass over someone's carburetor."

"I just sat through a two and a half hour lecture. Now I'm going to make hot dogs."

There's staticy silence between them for a moment, silence that has Dean crooked-grinning and beginning to dig around in the beer-sized fridge for his dinner: peanut butter and jam sandwich, a bottle of water. And, if he's lucky, one of his co-workers actually left him a donut.

"Listen," Dean stands up straight, with his sandwich in one hand, water in the other, and the phone in the crook of his neck. "One of my buddies is having some party at his bar tonight, I can pick you up at 9 if you want to come with me."

Laughing, because Dean's way of asking him out is _awesome_, Sam starts clinking around, looking for a pot to cook his wieners in.

"Sure," He tells him, almost knocking his head into the counter. In the garage, Dean lets out the breath he was holding, and almost goes dizzy from the sudden oxygen rush. "I'll see you at nine."

"Okay," Dean says.

Sam repeats, "Okay."

 

.

 

Dean turns up at 8:50, pulling up tight to the curb and leaving his headlights on. The only reason Sam even notices he's there is, because at 9:05, he checks out the window to make sure Dean isn't further up the street, lost. He's almost pissed at Dean for not coming to the door or phoning or texting or _anything,_ then the dude-part of his brain kicks in when he sees the shiny black car reflecting from the street lights.

"Jesus Christ," Sam breathes, and thinks that maybe Dean is really the best thing he's ever met.

He grabs his wallet and extra jacket, because October has been really weird and crisp, and it hasn't rained yet but Sam is counting down the days until it does, and makes sure he double-checks that he bolted the lock before he leaves.

On his way down the elevator he catches his reflection in the mirrored panelling, and fixes his hair.

Dean's still waiting in the front seat of the car when Sam knocks on the window and then lets himself into the passenger side, sliding into the seat and almost jacking off all over the dashboard. It's a nice car, okay.

"Hey," Sam greets, leaning back to pull his seat belt on. Dean's got the radio on low volume, and the sound of it makes Sam feel warm, like he's had enough beer to get buzzed but he's not quite there yet.

Dean smiles at him, this really awesome crooked-grin that makes Sam's insides heat up to the point of melting, and leans over, pulls Sam closer by the back of the neck and kisses him in this way that makes struggling through a sucky pre-law school in Vermont _okay._

 

.

 

The night is fairly uneventful. Sam meets the two friends Dean has, one guy owns the bar and the other kind of only knows Dean by association. They're nice to Sam and give him free drinks until he declines and goes for the free pretzels instead, and Dean beats both of them at pool before he and Sam take off.

Sam's back at school the next morning, slumping down into his seat while trying to keep both his eyes open as the group of girls in front of him start squealing away, and Sam's never really understood girls. He tries to block them out, and pretty much succeeds in doing so, until his subconscious picks up on the things they're saying – stuff like mechanic and "the $45 is _totally_ worth it" and "Amber's transmission broke, she found out his name is Dean. _Dean!_" and then they're squealing again, this quiet hush that keeps up until their sociology professor walks in and they seem to calm down into being pre-law students again.

Through the entire class, Sam smirks, this haughty little voice in the back of his head going _ha-ha_ over and over as he stares at the tops of their hairdos, combed and backcombed and hair sprayed. He isn't even that tired anymore, except he's not concentrating either, because he's just thinking, you little bitches keep on pissing me off, and I'll just go home and _fuck him._

 

.

 

After class Sam makes his way towards the garage Dean works at. It's owned by this guy named Sal or Slim or something equally slimy, but Sam does appreciate the crappy old architecture of the building and 70s era blinking signs out front. There's only one other mechanic other than Dean that works there, and Sam has only met him once – Archie, or something.

"Dean," Sam calls, ducking beneath a car something-or-other hanging from the ceiling, making a face when he balances himself against some kind of engine and comes away with a hand covered in grease and oil.

From somewhere inside the garage, Dean's muffled voice calls out, "I'll be with you in a damn second!"

Raising his eyebrows, Sam leans against the makeshift desk hanging around out front, and studies the ceiling. There are bits of cars and mechanical junk hanging all over the place – Sam thinks it'd be a great place to have a photo shoot at.

Or, you know. A really manly ribs eating contest or something.

Dean walks around a car half-jacked up on some kind of lift thing with a scowl on his face and both hands in a cloth. As soon as he sees Sam, his mouth relaxes and one eyebrow twitches up.

"Fuck, I thought you were – " He pauses to give Sam a super manly half-hug, just in case anyone's watching. Sam reciprocates by knocking Dean on the back with his fist, like he always sees in music videos and junk.

Sam pulls away and raises his eyebrows. "You thought I was..."

"Oh," Dean shakes his head and finishes wiping his hands off. "Some crazy bitch has been harassing me all morning."

Snickering despite himself, Sam leans back against the desk and continues eyeing the decorations hanging around. There's even a Playboy calendar from 1985 tacked up to Ms. December.

"Is Sal trying to relive his youth or something?" Sam asks, pointing to a pair of really disgusting looking fuzzy dice hanging over a sign that reads '_the doctor is in._' A slow smile creeps across Dean's face, this wide grin that lights up his eyes and makes Sam's stomach do really stupid things.

"I _like_ it," Dean tells him, taking a big sniff of the air. "Smells like my childhood."

Raising an eyebrow, Sam points to a bendy pencil hanging around on the desk in the shape of two boobs.

Dean's grin gets bigger, and more crooked.

 

.

 

He hangs out until Archie swings around, already decked out in previously dirty overalls and a kerchief. He and Dean ramble back and forth in a language Sam doesn't get, something about cylinders and o-rings, then Dean points out some list scribbled in pencil and says he'll be back Monday night. Archie offers Sam a little half-wave as he follows Dean through the winding body shop graveyard, until they're outside and the October air is biting at Sam's wrists.

"Shouldn't you be used to this shitty weather, Chicago-boy?" Dean asks, popping his collar up as a pussy-ass barrier to the wind.

Scowling, Sam shakes his head and falls into step with Dean as they start around back to the Impala.

"We should go to California," Sam says, just to get a reaction.

When Dean only offers him a half-smile and two wide eyes, something in Sam's throat starts tightening up.

 

.

 

They fall into this weird rhythm that consists of their separate schedules, a couple of fucks, the time Sam spends hanging around Sal's, and the time they spend driving around looking for new places to eat at. Pizza gets boring after a while, and Sam can only nuke a couple of hot dogs so many times before Dean won't even eat them.

It's Halloween night when they're downtown, idling at a red light while a procession of chicks with slutty animal costumes parade across the crosswalk – bunny with a g string, kitten with her tits hanging out, the usual – when it hits Sam in the gut that they've been doing this, this _thing_ for two months now.

He's careful not to say anything to Dean, just because he doesn't feel like fucking it up. Whether he likes it or not, Dean's the only friend he's got in fucking Vermont, and things are actually starting to work out. He can't afford to fuck it all up.

 

.

 

Half of the people in his classes the next day are absent, which Sam chalks up to hangovers, so he skips the next lecture since it'll probably be repeated next week, and heads over to the garage instead. He's pretty sure Dean works 'til two today, and even if it's later, he can always just do a coffee run or something.

When he gets there, there's a shiny, obviously brand new 'vette sitting out front, parked in the dirt lot with a club locked across the steering wheel. Clearly amused, Sam juggles the coffee tray from one arm to the other (he brought three blacks just cause he's not sure if Archie's working or not) and checks out the car's licence plates as he ducks inside. They're from Vermont.

"...what, you're not _interested_?" Someone's saying, this really chalky voice that makes Sam cringe immediately. He recognizes it without realizing he does, and glances around, trying to track down which car Dean's working on this morning.

Dean's voice, somewhere to his left, "Lady..."

He turns around a stack of dead engine parts and comes upon Dean, half underneath a cheap '85 Honda, and a chick standing above him in this teal green dress that looks _way too cold_ for November weather.

Sam clears his throat, Dean almost bashes his head against the car bumper, and the chick in the skirt jumps.

"What the hell?" She asks him, looking over his coffee tray.

He glances down at Dean, ignoring the both of them now, twisting his wrist as he tightens something and then quickly loosens it when he realizes it's _too_ tight.

"Coffee," He manages, lamely, dropping his book bag next to Sal's desk.

 

.

 

Turns out creepy stalker chick is also teal dress chick. These two girls also make up the fucking bitch who sits in front of Sam in business ethics, who, for the record, hasn't ever said a word to Sam unless it was a complaint or bitchy remark.

Trying to scratch as deep in his ear as he can, Sam yawns, and drains the remainder of his beer. They're at Dean's buddies' bar, his name is Colin or something equally English, and Sam has no idea how they would maintain a friendship if booze wasn't involved. They couldn't be more opposite.

"Dean's got himself a stalker," Sam tells Colin, when he's consumed by a couple lines of shots and a few extra beers on top of that.

Rolling his eyes, Dean sucks off his lemon slice, and downs his shot. Sam's not sure if Dean's doing it backwards, or if it's actually that drunk.

Colin, practicing his fancy bottle tricks on the other side of the bar, almost breaks a bottle when he drops it against the burgundy coloured carpet. It's kind of a dive bar. Dean's favourite gentlemen's haunts are mostly the same.

"A stalker?" He asks, raising his eyebrows as he glances between the two. Sam thinks it's funny how he says 'staukuh.' Kind of like someone from New York or Massachusetts, except with a lot more class.

Not as drunk as Sam, but still pretty buzzed, Dean half-grins at Sam and reaches across the distance between the two of them, making grabby hands for the back of Sam's neck as he drags them together and gives Sam the fucking sloppiest kiss he's ever been a part of.

"Sammy just likes to talk about himself," Dean explains, backing off of Sam for a half-second before he's back across the space between the stools, laughing into Sam's laughing mouth.

.

 

Sam finds out Dean's from Oakland, which explains a lot. Or at least, if what he's heard about Oakland is true, it explains a lot.

He's thinking about this a week later in ethics, when bitch-stalker sits down in front of him and promptly turns around with the widest, shit-eating grin on her face. Sam is horrified when he realizes it's directed at him.

"So you know Dean," She smiles at him, a piece of white gum stuck between her molars.

Blinking, eyebrows raised a little bit, Sam opens his mouth --

 

.

 

" – you told her I was _stunted_?" Dean groans, hips sliding forward as Sam grins against the skin underneath his belly button and tries to tug the tight denim of his jeans down over sweaty skin.

Sam nods, and drags his teeth over the sharp raise of Dean's hip. "Emotionally. And to a bizarre extent."

"What, ah – " Dean takes a minute to bite at his knuckles and wind up inside. "What'd she say?"

Licking down the waistline of Dean's pants, Sam rests both palms over each of Dean's knees, and looks up at Dean, stretched over his bed. "That she liked a challenge."

"Slut," Dean groans, pressing back into the mattress as Sam grins against his hip and thinks, _yeah._

 

.

A couple days later during his criminal psych class, Sam texts Dean just to bitch about how uncomfortable he feels with all the girls staring at him. Clearly, Dean says, you've never lived a straight day in your life.

_Clearly_, Sam texts back, rolling his eyes, _you're a total idiot._

Because it is, it's wicked uncomfortable and they're _watching him,_ he can feel them glancing back and looking at him in-between presentation slides, and the first fifteen times it happens, Sam's convinced there's something in his teeth or on his face or --

He's getting his junk together after the PowerPoint is finally fucking done (137 pages later) when – he finds out her name is April – she starts hovering around him, smiling.

"We're having a party at the Roxy tonight," She finally says to him, extending a brightly colored flyer for whatever. Sam takes it mostly because he figures it's bad karma not to. "You should totally come. And bring your..."

"Dean," Sam says, stupidly.

April smiles about a billion watts brighter. "Yeah!" And she claps Sam on the shoulder before she leaves.

Jamming the flyer into the front pocket of his bag, Sam frowns and tries to keep the scowling to a minimum (doing it to ugly people and jerks only), as he leaves campus.

.

 

"No way," Dean laughs, bent over an engine riddled with whatever the fuck problem. He's got oil smeared just under his bottom lip, and man, what a spot for it, Sam decides, as he leans against the car and flaps the crumpled folder around. Dean uses his wrench or socket or hammer to tighten something; Sam watches, it's kinda interesting. "You got the wrong person if you're into that scene."

"I'm not," Sam promises, trying to flatten the flyer out as an afterthought. "But they all _hate_ me, man, and maybe this way at least, I don't know."

"You'll make besties with somebody?" Dean snorts, finally pulling out from under the hood of the Toyota and wiping his hands on a nearby towel, already mostly caked with black shit and whatever else. Sandwich toppings.

Sam frowns, cause it doesn't sound really appealing when Dean puts it that way, but.

"They _hate me_, Dean," He reiterates, holding the flyer between them.

The two of them try to stare each other down for a few minutes, and Sam thinks Dean's almost won when he crumbles and sighs, snatching the flyer out of Sam's hand and wiping a palm over his forehead.

"I'll go ten minutes, tops," Dean says, glancing it over, then shoving it back at Sam. Hard.

Sam grins wide and pulls him in for a hug that he decides should probably lead to minor grinding.

.

 

It does. Right up against the half-open door of Mr. Carlson's without-a-muffler Tercel.

 

.

 

Sam actually gets a half-smile from April the next day, and while he knows it's only because she thinks she can get her claws around Dean, it still makes Sam feel a bit better. At least he'll be getting fake niceness instead of all around bitchiness.

April really is kind of a bitch.

That afternoon he skips his last lecture to go home and shower, phoning Dean to leave a message and make sure he doesn't just cop out. Dean phones back while Sam's in the bathroom and bitches into his voicemail about how Dean Winchester is maybe some things, but he isn't flaky and damnit, Sam, why do we have to go? I'll pick you up at nine.

Sam listens to the message playback soaking wet and grinning, dripping shower water all along his hallway floor as he lets his mind wander on what he should wear.

Eventually he settles for jeans and a hoodie, because he figures it's only a college party, no big.

 

.

 

Dean shows up in a leather jacket and tight enough black jeans, and Sam feels so out of his league it makes his stomach sink.

"Let's go," Dean grumbles from the front seat of the Impala, gripping his hands around the steering wheel, glaring up at Sam hovering around the passenger side window. "Well? Let's get it over with."

Licking his lips, Sam goes to say something like 'nah let's just stay in' or 'if you don't want to...', but ends up nodding dumbly and chucking his bag into the backseat. There's nothing of importance in it, but it's just one of those things that go everywhere with him.

"Hi, by the way," Sam tries to laugh, doing his seatbelt up. Dean makes a ha-ha face and pulls out onto the street, but at the next intersection reaches across to grab Sam by the head and give him a decent enough kiss.

The rest of the way to the party, Sam has this dumb vacant smile on his face, and the same feeling in his chest.

 

.

 

Within a minute and a half of them pulling up onto the massive front yard, April manages to sniff Dean out and track them both down before they're even in the backyard.

She sneaks up from the left and wraps herself around Dean's arm, despite the fact that the other is loosened around Sam's shoulders.

"What the – " He startles, looking down at her, grinning back up at him.

"Hey," She smiles, grinning brightly up at him, disregarding Sam's existence.

Dean looks at her incredulously, and tries to shrug her off, stepping all over Sam's left foot. "Hi?" He manages back, but she keeps her arm wound around him tight, this weird girl vice grip.

"It's so cool you made it," She tells him, nodding, biting her bottom lip.

Dean's eyebrows are knotted together so tight Sam's pretty sure his skin's gonna get tangled. "Okay," He tells her, finally twisting around and slinking his shoulders out of her grip. He makes it around to Sam's other side, and tugs him in the direction of the booze table, clearly planning to get wasted.

They leave April in the dust, and suddenly, Sam doesn't feel quite so bad anymore.

 

.

 

Dean gets drunk enough to hang around longer than his originally planned ten minutes, and Sam finds himself on the hour and a half mark into the party with a doorknob in his back and Dean's hand down his pants.

It's not a bad position to be in, honestly.

"Party's not so bad anymore," Dean slurs against Sam's mouth, so Sam grins and gets a tongue against his teeth for his effort.

Sam twists them around until Dean's the one against the broom closet with his pants loosened and his shirt pulled up to his nipples.

"Maybe she has a chance," Sam whispers against his mouth, kissing him in this way that makes him moan and drop his weight against Sam's chest, "Now that you have your beer goggles on."

Dean's trying to hoist one leg up around Sam's waist when he mumbles, "Fuck the beer goggles," and twists one hand into the hair on the back of Sam's head for leverage.

 

.

 

They crash at Sam's apartment that night, and despite the fact that he assumed his body was used to getting abused with alcohol, Dean still wakes up with an insanely uncomfortable hangover.

Sam, already bleary-eyed and up for another day of pre-law, leaves a cup of coffee by the bed and picks up all the condoms from where they were scattered around the bed. He's thoughtful, he thinks to himself, imagining the way Dean would've bitched if he'd stepped on one barefoot.

Before he leaves, he unscrews the Tylenol and leaves that beside the sludgy coffee, then makes plans to text Dean around noon.

What he doesn't plan for, however, is how April makes a sneak attack on him in the school parking lot.

Damnit, Sam wants to tell her, I'm not even fully _awake_ yet.

"Hey, Sammy," She breathes in his ear, in this weird projected voice that Sam's heard from girls before. He whips around and almost hits her in the face with his own coffee. She laughs like it's hilarious, and reaches for the inside of his arm. "I didn't know you were, you know."

He raises his eyebrows and tries to wiggle out of her grip, but she manages to keep on holding on.

"What?" He supplies, frowning when she doesn't let go.

She's kind of jiggling around from Sam's efforts, and her voice is all stilted because of it when she says, "Gay."

"Yeah," Sam nods without thinking. "It's kind of a thing."

April lets go of his arm and smiles, and Sam, without thinking, hurries on.

"It's cool," She calls after him, as Sam's trying to figure out her ulterior motive. "Your boyfriend's great!"

Shaking his head, he ducks into the library building, and clutches the coffee cup to his chest.

"Girls are insane," He whispers, just as his cell starts buzzing away in his pocket.

 

.

 

_To: Sam  
From: d._

planning to crash at your place all day if that's cool.

 

.

 

Sam grins and texts back, _sure_, like it's nothing.

 

.

 

After that, Sam achieves this weird level of pseudo-popularity just because the girls know they can get to Dean through Sam. All they really like to do is ogle him, which, well, whatever gets them off, as long as Sam's the one fucking him at the end of the day.

April turns out to not be all that bad, at least when she's got her game face on, and not her bitch face. She's kinda funny in that really asshole-ish way, and she kinda reminds Sam of one of his old buddies girlfriends. They broke up six months ago, but that's neither here nor there.

"I feel like you're using me to achieve celebrity status," Dean says one night, when he's working his way through an entire order of Chinese stir-fry that he picked up on his way to Sam's place. Sam, holed up in the corner on his laptop as he attempts to finish a paper that will account for a good half his grade despite the fact that Dean's watching The Simpsons at nuclear volume, nods vacantly. "And that's cool, you know. I get that."

He keeps conversation with himself as Sam spell-checks and debates increasing his font size to get a higher page count, and really, what else could Sam ask for other than a boyfriend who can amuse himself?

Dean switches the channel with Futurama comes on ("so not into that future travel stuff, and have you seen the one with Fry's _dog_?") and cackles like a maniac when he finds some clip show about The Greatest Explosions Caught on Film.

.

"April invited us to her party tonight," Sam says, distractedly, trying to double check his lottery numbers with the newspaper and the ones he copied off of last night's 6'o'clock news. "She said it's B.Y.O.B."

Dean looks at him through the bathroom door with a dripping wet face and half-opened eyes. "What the hell?"

"Bring your own booze," Sam supplies, making a face when he realizes he hasn't won any millions of dollars.

Turning back to look at himself in the mirror, Dean cleans the last streak of shaving cream off of his jaw.

"These people are insane," He tells himself.

.

 

And for the rest of the year, that's how it is. That's Sam's real life, this weird mix of parties and getting drunk and getting fucked and fucking Dean, and April has introduced the rest of her friends to Sam, so really a lot of the time he feels like whatshisface from The O.C., the one who didn't get to bang the hot chick 'til the second season. He's _popular_, in this really fake and contrived way, because clearly all they continue to want is Dean, but he's so good at playing aloof they never really get what they want.

Which is a laugh or fuck even a smile, some kind of flirt-back, but Sam's never seen anything like that. Dean hasn't let his guard down once.

So that's cool, until August rolls around and he and Dean break up two weeks shy of fucking each other for a year.

Dean continues to not do they whole 'boyfriend' thing.

They break up over something dumb, Sam doesn't even remember, he thinks he might've been drunk when it happened, and he doesn't even know if it's for real or just another one of Dean's little bitch-phases. He goes through a lot of them and usually just turns up with a six-pack on Sam's doorstep at one point or another.

Either way, he never does. Never turns up. And even after Sam goes home for two weeks before the new term begins, he never hears a word.

And just as a real fucking kick in the ass, April doesn't call him after that. Goes back to being a bitch in class, because she's so good she can flip it on and turn it off just as quick.

Sam 'accidentally' kicks her in the back of the head one Friday afternoon, after a particularly grating lecture. She almost punches him out right in the middle of the hall, but he ducks at just the right moment because he used to watch a lot of those overdubbed Asian fight films, so he knows how things like this work.

He hauls ass down the bench stairs, though, and doesn't stop until he gets back to his apartment.

 

.

 

_To: d. (ASSHOLE)  
From: Sam_

You gonna tell me what's up, or what I did?

 

.

 

To: Sam  
From: d. (ASSHOLE)

what?

 

.

 

He's at a bus stop again when he gets Dean's text, because since they broke up he's had to go back to relying on public transportation. Which is clearly more of a pain in the ass than nagging at Dean until he drives him to Safeway to get some Coke Zero.

His phone vibrates in his pocket, he pulls it out and flips it open, views the message.

"What?" Sam repeats, then asks the small crowd gathered around the bus stop with him, "_What_?"

A girl listening to her iPod gives him the stink-eye, figuring he's crazy or drunk or both, but Sam's done with this crappy version of communication, so he decides to suck it up and give Dean a call.

Dean's phone rings about a zillion times before Sam's sent to voicemail.

"I don't even know why the fuck I'm not blowing you right now," Sam tells the receiver, and knows who's eavesdropping on his conversation when this little old lady's face lights up like a Christmas tree. "I've been waiting for you to call me, so don't give me this what business. I know you're probably at work, whatever, but talk to me after. I want to know what's up."

 

.

 

So it turns out to be this big misunderstanding, ha-ha, and all that crap. Apparently, or so it's documented on one of April's friend's Facebook, the two of them got into a drunken fist-fight in the middle of a pool party, how it started Sam doesn't know, but he got Dean in the eye and then Dean punched him in the mouth which _pissed_ Sam off because he needed that to _talk_, so Sam told him to fuck off or something – he's hazy on the details, Dean only remembers vague bits and pieces, but assumed Sam was for real when he shoved Dean into the pool and walked home completely wobbly drunk.

Clearly Sam is dramatic when he's wasted.

So Dean calls him a retard and tells him to bring him some coffee, bitch, he's been stuck at the garage for hours.

Sam does.

Also, Sam decides to leave April a particularly nasty comment on one of her most-viewed MySpace photos in his own way of giving her the brush off, despite the fact that Dean's now back on his side after a good six hour marathon of makeup sex.

Clearly April doesn't know what she's missing. Sam's witty, damnit, and knows how to fry chicken on a barbeque. Fry _chicken_ on a _barbeque._

Dean agrees with him, anyway. Sam is obviously a catch.

 

.

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**From: Sam  
Comment / 2 Sept 2008 8:57**

_April! Man it's been so long I don't remember the last time I saw you. Oh yeah, maybe it was that night I got drunk and threw my boyfriend into a pool, then you blew me off and continued to think you'd be able to fuck him. Anyways so that's not gonna happen, but in the meantime, feel free to continue being a total bitch... me and Dean are going to the coast for a week though, so I'll see you when I see you. enjoy the rest of your summer!! ☺☺☺Sam _


End file.
